Friday, January 04, 2013

The Sisterhood and identity politics in SF

San Francisco's political community likes to congratulate itself on how "progressive" it is compared to the rest of the country (Bay Guardian: "We know that it's the rest of the country that's the problem, not us...we wait for the rest of the world to catch up.").

Yet the city's progressives cling to identity politics, especially when it comes to women. In the Chronicle, Alix Rosenthal ties herself in knots:

Alix Rosenthal, who has run for supervisor and is active in organizations that seek to get more women elected to office, noted that though there are already four Asian American supervisors on the board, none is a single woman with children. If Chu were to leave, there would be only three female board members. "We don't have parity on the Board of Supervisors---women currently have only four out of 11 seats...and one big gaping hole is there are no mothers," she said. "I don't know enough about the district to know if Asian voters will vote for a white person appointed by an Asian mayor...but I reject the idea that any particular seat has a particular demographic that must be elected to it."

Rosenthal suggests that Asians in District 4 shouldn't have a lock on the District 4 seat, but it's okay to push for more women on the Board of Supervisors! Still waiting to learn what special quality women bring to politics. So far it's undetectable.